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#2005-02: Roommates or Families? Access to Housing and the Transition to Non-Marital Cohabitation in Sweden.
Author: Nathanael T. Lauster, University of Minnesota
ABSTRACT: Some researchers suggest that non-marital cohabitants behave like a subcategory of roommates, while others find non-marital cohabitants behave like new families. If non-marital cohabitants behave like roommates, then more access to housing would make young adults more likely to remain single. If non-marital cohabitants behave like families, then more access to housing would make young adults more likely to cohabit. In this paper I directly test these two competing hypotheses with life course data from the Swedish Family Survey of 1992. I find that better access to housing significantly increases the likelihood of entering non-marital cohabitation and for men, those entering non-marital cohabitation in Sweden are increasingly behaving like new families rather than roommates over time.